In one of my first "real" jobs, I worked on an IBM System 36 and System 38 as assistant operator... I also worked as a user on these systems as well as others (remember CICS?) I think that qualifies me as one of the "some of us" :-) One of the jobs that I had was linking an IBM PC-XT (5 Mb Full Height Hard Drive... very very modern machine for the time) to the mainframes using and IRMA card and software libraries. We created a customized screen interface using the IRMA link, the libraries, and custom code on the PC.
Andy On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 9:19 AM, Howard White <[email protected]> wrote: > > Andrew Farnsworth wrote: > > Yep, remember, this was back in the era when multitasking was a > > mainframe word and was unheard of on anything smaller than room sized. > > Even then, multitasking was very limited and most commercial mainframes > > still required a human (or sub-human) operator to manage the workload. > > Personal Computers didn't get multitasking until the Macintosh came out > > and even then it was cooperative multitasking (software based) rather > > than preemptive multitasking (hardware based) and your infinite loop > > really would bring the machine to it's knees. > > > > Andy > > > You know that some of us worked on those mainframes, Andy. Even then we > wondered just _what_ that multitasking was really doing. As far as I > could tell, the programmers were the only ones doing multitasking as we > had to have eight or ten things to work on at a time while waiting for > program compiles to cycle through the queue. > > In 1979, our company bought a Honeywell minicomputer that was about the > size of your average office desk. It had a laminate top on the top to > carry that metaphor - it was a _desk_, not a desktop, computer. A > killer system it was, too: 128 K of memory (I hesitate to say RAM) and > a 10 MB disk split between a 5MB fixed platter and a 5MB removeable > cartridge. We had two terminals and two printers connected to the > system. It had a real operating system that would have supported more > users sessions if there was I/O to drive. > > Not real fast but got the job done. > > Howard > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
